Bullying starts in preschool, seems to peak during the middle school years, and declines during high school. Except for hazing, we don’t hear much about bullying in colleges and universities. We do hear about abusive spouses and workplace bullies, however, which underscore the facts that bullying is a learned behavior that must be unlearned. Bullies don’t just grow up and grow out of it. They must be taught better ways of relating to others at an early age.
Bully Buster OC can help! After finding out that the Girls Scouts Diamonds of Arkansas, Oklahoma have been offering a “No Bully Badge” for participating in Anti-Bullying activities, Bully Buster OC has decided to reach out to local troops to offer and facilitate the same opportunity. As a Girl Scout or Boy Scout leader, you have surely witnessed the bullying yourself, or you’ve heard the reports or rumors. You believe that young people have the right to feel safe, secure, accepted, and valued at school and at youth activities, free from teasing, name-calling, harassment, threats, intimidation, violence, and fear.
By helping the girls and boys in your troop participate in the Bully Buster OC Workshop and/or Anti-Bullying activities, you are promoting intervention and prevention where it is needed the most! It’s not enough to stop the bullying that’s already happening; we also need to keep young students who aren’t yet bullies or victims from starting down that road. Bully Buster OC is willing and able to facilitate activities and workshops to help have a fun and worry free year of Girl and Boy Scouting.
Encouraged to attend one of the Free Bully Buster OC Workshops, Troops can come and learn in a group practical tools and skills on how to become a Bully Buster the first and third of every month in San Juan Capistrano. Also available are, private workshops for individual or groups of troops. There are also opportunities for curriculum that will help troops to qualify for community volunteer patches through learning and teaching Anti-Bullying to other troops.
Please reach out to Bully Buster OC to learn more details about attending or schedule a Bully Buster Workshop in your area!
bullybusteroc 
My Daughters Girl Scout troop in Oregon is going to be doing their Silver Award on Bullying. Can you recommend any sites or places that they might go to gather more information on how to proceed.
Thank You,
Debra Moffitt
Hi Debra,
Thanks so much for the comment, and I would be happy to help. I am well aware of the Silver Project that you are talking about and I commend your daughter and her troop for taking on the issue of bullying! First and foremost I want to make sure that my suggestions are only used as a guide for the girls, because I know that a big part of such community service projects are about the girls coming up with the projects themselves and working to make it happen on their own. I am happy to give you some guidance in order to help guide them! I have written a blog about the different resources online, but the rabbit hole goes deep and you can get lost in the information. So let me give you some good steps!
Here is what I suggest.
1. First have the girls come up with a collective definition of Bullying, making sure to encourage them to also include non direct forms of bullying, like leaving someone out of an activity (relational).
2. Have the girls talk about how they have expierenced bullying (whether it be verbal, relational, physical, or cyber-bullying), and encourage discussion about how they see bullying as harming each other, the community, their friends, schools, families, etc.
3. Have the girls choose one specific type of bullying to research and then teach to other troops, students, the community, churches etc. I suggest this specific narrow focus because it is important to learn and teach practical bite size chunks of information. I have seen too many experts or speakers lecture or teach an all encompassing solution to bullying, and it is information overload. Bullying is a dynamic problem to fix, and so having the girls identify how it effects your specific community, then researching and learning of ways to help one element of it, they can make a difference.
Now then, once they have defined, talked about, and decided on the specific type of bullying they want to address here are some steps to follow.
1. Have them (with your help) search for resources online. I suggest government websites like http://www.stopbullyingnow.gov as a start. H
2. Have them interview their peers
3. Have them interview Parents
4. Have them interview teachers
5. Have them talk with public figures or police and fire agencies to ask them how they would tackle the specific problem they identified.
Then have them gather all the information, and discuss what solutions are best for their specific bully topic, and figure out how to present the issue, and how to best solve that element of bullying.
Have them come up with a fun title for their workshop, like the “Be nice not Mean” workshop, or the “Don’t be a ….” workshop. Make it unique.
Then reach out to the community (via the city counsel, PTA, schools, churches, etc) and tell them that your troop is putting on a “whatever you are calling it” workshop, and get a space donated, and literally hold a community workshop!
Make sure to invite all other Girl Scout troops, and even Boy Scout troops! The more the merrier. Then have your girls put on a workshop that focuses on what they learned!
It should make for a great community service project!
My last suggestion, would be to have the girls determine a “color” that they feel represents their message. Then pass out little ribbons or something to the attendees, and then “unofficially” name the day of the presentation as “xyz” day, and ask the community to remember this date, and ask that each year on this date, everyone wear that color to remember what they learned that day!
Hope these suggestions help, and I would love to hear how it goes and be a resource for you if you have any questions that come up along the way!
Thanks and hope to hear from you!
Ryan Foland
Bully Buster USA